In April, I was invited to read one of the poems I had submitted to the 2008 Poets & Writers Celebration scheduled for May 2. This celebration is held each year on the Eureka campus of College of the Redwoods.

A prize is awarded for the best poem and the best prose piece. It would be my first experience at doing this sort of thing, and I was a somewhat nervous thinking about it. When I told some friends about the invitation, they encouraged me to do it without hesitation; they knew about it, so I had to go through with it.

There were 12 writers who read that Friday evening at the Poets & Writers Spring 2008 Celebration. Some truly gifted writers and poets were there, I realized as the evening wore on. About 50 people were in the audience, which consisted of faculty members, librarians, students and community members, including seniors.

This spring celebration was co-hosted by CR professors David Holper and Vinnie Baku, along with four student editors: Chris Knight, Patricia MacDonald, Roy Marin and Phillip Neel. Held in the spring and/or fall of every year since 1999, the Poets & Writers event is a performance celebrating original compositions by community members, students, staff and faculty of CR.

The prize for prose was won by Carla Baku. Her piece titled “Disciple” was about experiences in a Christian cult. It was deeply perceptive, even painfully descriptive, I thought. Afterward, David Holper announced that Carla had received the prestigious Jack Kent Cooke Scholarship last year and has been studying this year in Stanford’s Master of Fine Arts program.

The prize for poetry was won by Ginny Jaramillo for her poem in free verse titled “The Swather,” a modern and surrealistic tale with ultra-clear expression.

Nervous to the last minute, I got up after being introduced and read my work, which is titled “Seasontide,” a traditional-style poem of eight quatrains in four-foot meter, double rhymed.

Carried somehow by the tenacity displayed by earlier readers, my nervousness disappeared and I read my poem easily and with conviction. Here it is:

“Seasontide”

Late Autumn leaves of auburn hue
Free falling to the fertile loam
Lie littering the woodland view
Beyond this old adobe home.

Many a naked tree now stays,
Silhouettes on a winter sky.
The broad new-carpeted byways
Are canopies once greening high.

Those arbors shorn and shallow lain
In solvent soils of earth recede
To sprout and issue yet again
The oak and elm from seed to seed.

Buds shoot out to broadleaf bowers,
Meadows to far reality
Oh death, those fresh spring-tidal hours
Foreclose on your finality.

Gently rolling summer heartland,
Flowering and green tree bearing;
Sylvan raptures midst prairie stand
In splendor for the wayfaring.

The needle grass out waving there
Is inviting me to wander
And taste the wilder native air
Where the tall grass lands meander.

I will my fingers roam through it
And savor that new-grown incense,
Asking Him to spin my spirit
Into its wild pre-eminence.

I will the greening of my heart
Renew in the rustling wildwood;
I will for Del Norte depart
With cares lost in the prairiehood.

All work read at Poets & Writers that night will be posted to the “Poetry and Prose” section of CR Web site: www.redwoods.edu/departments/english/poets&writers/index.htm.

The CR librarian in the audience informed me afterward that the third edition of the “Guide to Natural Swimming Holes” had just been added to the CR Library collection. This guide was previously added to Humboldt County Library collections. The first edition of “Guide to Natural Swimming Holes” was published in four installments of the Senior News beginning in June 2001.

Albert Miller is a resident of Fortuna.